This is long, sorry.............
Most of the Platte Valley areas are also going to see the increases. 25 licenses for the entire month of November in many units.
I have so much info on this, and it goes way back. And it comes to the present. We have a CWD Task Force set up for the Laramie Range. The G&F actually cancelled the first meeting after about 10 minutes because we disagreed that having the only real speaker be the "expert" from Colorado was a good idea. It appears G&F is "pushing" the Task Force to support the Colorado "depopulation" model. The G&F then set a new meeting for April. That was also cancelled. Now they are bringing in a facilitator (likely Jessica) and we will start in May. It appears to be a ruse to get us to agree to the idea to eradicate the deer. Objective for the Laramie Range is 20,000 deer. At 10,000 now and the biologist told me they'd like to reduce it to 1,000 deer. That's 5% of objective and only 1,000 deer in the entire Laramie Range. Between predators, competition and other factors, it is doubtful the deer would recover in decades.
I knew Beth Williams pretty well. She basically "discovered" CWD and was great. Too bad she was taken so soon. I think she would have been a great asset in this issue. I can't repeat things she said to me in this forum, but I wish she was here and could speak.
(CAPS for emphasis).....
I've been watching the CWD debate and issue closely for 30+ years. I AM ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED THE DEER ARE GETTING SOME LEVEL OF GENETIC RESISTANCE TO CWD. After we have invested nearly 40 years of building disease resistance, the G&F is going to kill the older bucks that have not died from CWD and that apparently don't have the disease. And it;s likely that some of those bucks have genetic resistance. Killing them is dumb, dumb. That'll set us back another 40 years while we rebuild that genetic resistance. (There is elk research that documents resistance.) The question is... If 40% of the deer have CWD, then why on earth would we want to kill the 60% that do not have it?
I'm not sure how many on these forums are familiar with all of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Bovines get "mad cow," sheep get scrapie and cervids (deer ) get CWD. (Humans get Crutzfeld-Jacob.) All allegedly caused by prions, which are folded proteins.
Scrapie was basically eliminated by working on the sheep genome. Google this if you are interested in how it was done, and done fairly quickly. If the alleles on codon 171 (if I remember correctly) both have RR then that animal is the "unicorn" that doesn't get scrapie. Researchers would test sheep by clipping a small part of the ear and checking genetics, and when they found rams with that RR genetic code on codon 171, they bred those rams to every ewe they could find. In a few years, the RR genetics became predominant and scrapie became more of a memory than a problem.
Genetics are the solution. We need the genome work completed, and it is being studied. And then we need the follow-up research to determine which genetic markers predict resistance to to CWD. I have been told that since the sheep research was completed about 20 years ago, it could be used as a viable "pattern" to work on deer.
But for some totally unexplained reason, our managers have decided to kill the deer that most likely have resistance and ignore the potential of the needed research.
I was in Carbon County yesterday and this morning. People there are very upset about this. I did not talk with one person who was supportive. One person was ambivalent, but most people were very upset and agitated.
I've hunted Colorado almost every year this century. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife crew is "depopulating" the deer in many units on the plains. I've hunted the plains the last 3 years. People are mad and the deer are gone. I also talk to hunters from out of state. This Colorado "depopulation" model has been tried in WI, IA and in Alberta and SK. Every single person I have talked to except Game and Fish employees says it is somewhere between a dismal failure and a total wreck. Everyone hates it.
As a side note, there is also some research and anecdotal information about mineral supplements and the suppression or elimination of CWD in those populations. It's too long to go into here, but suffice it to say that options other than "depopulation" exist.
Take the time to voice your opinion. Now might be our only chance for a whole generation of hunters. Send emails and go to meetings. Contact G&F Commissioners because they are the ones that actually make the decisions.
This is a bad management decision and a sad deal. For both the wildlife resource and for hunters or even people that just like to view a mature buck on the winter range. Makes my heart ache.